Sorry this is up a little late, and well, we’re behind on basically everything for the comic. As usually seems to, things sort of came up until, bam, no weekend left and there we are with monday hurtling in and the comic is not done.

Anyway, short ramble as Monday continues to hurtle directly at us and there is some stuff I need to do for work before the East Coast wakes up.

As much as Atter is sort of a dumbass, he really does seem to have a lot power. We have never seen Kally make more then one dragon, and that alone makes her one of the strongest mages out there. Atter seems to be producing quite a few Ethereal Creatures over an impressive distance.

Nathan described the red constructs as “a program, written to eidos. More like a… drone then a robot.” and that you can destroy them by “running them out of mana or shattering them.”. So Kally could probably have her dragon wander off IF she pumped some extra mana into it… but she’s the responsible type and only supplies mana in a at-need basis (hence keeps the dragon near her). Atter on the other hand pumps his drones up on mana and lets them wander off… because Atter totally seems like the irresponsible sort.

I am of course assuming the further the drone is away from the controller, the harder it is for the controller to supply mana and control: of course the range for control would be much further than the range for mana supply. It wouldn’t surprise me if Atter lets his drones wander outside of his control range.

Technically Mium is not goading or taunting Mr Atter… he is simplifying the decision space by forcing Atter into gaining a utility function (i.e. behaving in a predictable way)… LOL.

And “Yay!” for Ila being Mium’s favourite way at shooting things… wait… is Mium NOT allowed to shoot things himself? (I don’t remember seeing him ever shoot anything “directly”).

And thank goodness that Atter’s protective field extends to his pants… (oddly though, not his shirt!?!) (he must have a protective field, because his hair is intact (hair is dead after all)). I guess you needed an excuse to show Atter’s body art & ethereal construct repaired arms… is that an old injury or a new one??? I’m guessing new because of damage to his forehead… but it is a bit strange to suffer damage on inside of your arm in an explosion… (defensive wounds are usually on outside of arms).

Atter was using his ethereal constructs to demolish the tank, and probably had his arms spread while controlling them. I’m also supposing that the hull of the tank gave some protection to his lower half.

The hair is more problematic, but I think we can chalk that up to our esteemed artist/author not wanting to take precious drawing time to figure out how to depict scorched hairdos. Just guessing here. ^^

It is definitely interesting. It is also possible that the top half of Atter was more damaged, he just did not do a great patch job on putting his human face back on (if Atter really is some sort of Ethereal creature as seems potentially implied here).

There is precedent for hair durability exceeding standard specs, when Ila blasted Rovak, she did shred all of his clothes and most of Rovak, and his hair was still fine.

The placement of the arm “wounds” is weird though. I am pretty curious if that is just random or not.

Totally forgot about Rovak vs Ila’s scorched earth policy… her blast was so powerful, it splintered up the tree Rovak was taking cover near and left a nice big brown patch where grass was. Well I guess Atter’s hair should be at least as tough as Rovak’s hair!!

Atter’s eyes are also glowing here, and they were not glowing previously (well, maybe reflective like a cat’s eyes more then actually glowing). Not sure what that means, but it does make him look a crazy scary demon person.

Also, is that [slightly broken] ethereal construct under Atter’s head and arms? Is that how he patches up his wounds, are demons literally more concrete ethereal constructs, is that supposed to be underlying muscle (and just so happens to be the same color), or is it something else entirely?

And how did he manage to get those particular wounds? Seems like odd places to be hit, without surrounding areas also hit. Inner arms and forehead? I get arms if he was going for the bomb, and forehead I can also believe, but I would have expected hands if it was from the heat and he was reaching in, or generally chest if he was hit with debris that deflected of his inner arms (and head, but that’s easy).

Those are also some incredibly robust pants, given what happened to his shirt, but I’m perfectly fine with that – he just shares a retailer with the Hulk, I guess.

It is really interesting what is going on there. I would share the assumption that perhaps Atter is not as “real” as he may appear. As is frequent with this comic, it has been very cagey with confirming if Atter is a demon in a literal sense or not. This seems like a borderline confirmation that he is, and that would be really interesting for the greater mythos if a construct could be “so real” it could walk around and talk and threaten to kill people.

Additionally interesting is if you take his ranting literally, Witches (like Kally, the Red Dragon Witch) are imitating his power when they create an ethereal constructs, which means quite possible the entire concept of them is based on “conceptual monsters that have become real” or “creatures that are more part of Eidos than reality”. Really interesting stuff to consider.